Figure 4

Systemic protein levels of HB-EGF and OSM are elevated in breast carcinoma patients. (A). HB-EGF and OSM plasma protein levels correlate in human donors. Plasma from 26 control donors and 102 breast carcinoma patients was analysed. Pearson’s correlation coefficient between HB-EGF and OSM levels: 0.722; 95% confidence interval: 0.628 to 0.795; p < 2.2e-16 (alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0). (B). HB-EGF plasma protein levels correlate with primary tumor size in patients with invasive breast carcinoma. Box plots show HB-EGF plasma levels of 26 control donors, 23 pT1 donors, 13 pT2 donors and 9 pT3 donors. P-values by Mann-Whitney’s U-Test are: Ctrl-pT2: 0.0058; Ctrl-pT3: 0.0003; pT1-pT2: 0.0017; pT1-pT3: 0.0008. (C). HB-EGF plasma protein levels correlate with lymph node dissemination of invasive breast carcinoma. Box plots depict HB-EGF levels of control donors (Ctrl; n = 26), donors with nodal negative (pN0; n = 26) and with nodal positive disease (pN > 0; n = 28). (D). Elevated HB-EGF plasma levels are indicative of disseminating breast carcinomas. Invasive breast carcinoma patients (n = 54) were grouped into an HB-EGF negative (-; n = 27) and HB-EGF positive (+; n = 27) cohort, using the mean plasma HB-EGF concentration of control donors (21.2 pg/ml; n = 26) as a threshold. 70% (19/27) of HB-EGF positive patients had disseminated tumors, whereas only 33% (9/27) of HB-EGF negative patients were lymph node positive. p = 0.020 by Mann Whitney’s U-Test. Conditional probabilities: P(pN > 0 | HB-EGF+) = 0.704 and P(pN > 0 | HB-EGF-) = 0.333.